TY - JOUR JF - J FLUID MECH PB - CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS ID - discovery82782 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022112097006447 N1 - © 1997 Cambridge University Press AV - public SN - 0022-1120 N2 - The subtle impact of the spanwise scaling in nonlinear interactions between oblique instability waves and the induced longitudinal vortex field is considered theoretically for the case of a Rayleigh-unstable boundary-layer flow, at large Reynolds numbers. A classification is given of various flow regimes on the basis of Reynolds-stress mechanisms of mean vorticity generation, and a connection between low-amplitude non-parallel vortex/wave interactions and less-low-amplitude non-equilibrium critical-layer flows is discussed in more detail than in previous studies. Two new regimes of vortex/wave interaction for increased spanwise lengthscales are identified and studied. In the first, with the cross-scale just slightly larger than the boundary-layer thickness, the wave modulation is governed by an amplitude equation with a convolution and an ordinary integral term present due to nonlinear contributions from all three Reynolds-stress components in the cross-momentum balance. In the second regime the cross-scale is larger; and the wave modulation is found to be governed by an integral/partial differential equation. In both cases the main-flow non-parallelism contributes significantly to the coupled wave/vortex development. SP - 247 VL - 348 Y1 - 1997/10// TI - Vortex/inflectional-wave interactions with weakly three-dimensional input A1 - Timoshin, SN A1 - Smith, FT KW - BOUNDARY-LAYER-TRANSITION KW - TOLLMIEN-SCHLICHTING WAVES KW - OBLIQUE INSTABILITY WAVES KW - TAYLOR-GORTLER VORTICES KW - PLANE PARALLEL FLOW KW - NONLINEAR EVOLUTION KW - SHEAR FLOWS KW - RESONANT-TRIAD KW - CROSS-FLOW KW - STREAMWISE VORTICES EP - 294 ER -